Chapter 129: Dark Night
This Translation is hosted on bcatranslation.com
Duncan couldn’t quite put his finger on it, but there was a palpable shift in the atmosphere aboard the Vanished. The ship seemed to exude an emotion akin to satisfaction as it raced forward at maximum speed, slicing through the ocean waves with purpose.
As he strolled along the deck, Duncan observed the spectral sails, fluttering despite the absence of wind. He paused, gazing up at the mast towering above him like a sentinel in the night. Tapping the ship’s wooden railing thoughtfully, he mused aloud, “You’re tired of aimless drifting too, aren’t you?”
The ship didn’t respond verbally but emitted a slight creaking noise from below deck, strained by the force of the water against its hull. The Vanished had its own language—a rope slithered across the wooden planks and dangled next to Duncan, almost as if reaching out to him.
“That’s not exactly endearing, you know. Actually, it’s a bit unsettling,” Duncan remarked, eyeing the rope that now reminded him of a snake. “Is this the same trick you used to scare Alice last time?”
In response, the rope swayed twice before retracting quickly, like a child caught doing something naughty.
Taking a deep breath to savor the fresh night air, Duncan suddenly felt a pulse of energy from a great distance. This sensation wasn’t from the ship; it emanated from the direction of Pland, the city-state. He had mentally marked a few individuals there, and this particular pulse seemed to be originating from Nina’s room next door.
Without hesitation, Duncan let his consciousness drift into the abyss of darkness, following the signal. Initially, he suspected it might be his niece Nina sending a distress signal, but to his surprise, it was actually coming from Shirley.
“What’s happened to Shirley?” he wondered, alarmed.
Shifting his focus back to his second physical form located in the antique shop, Duncan moved quickly. He knocked lightly on Nina’s door but received no answer. There was no movement inside the room.
Growing increasingly concerned as he felt another cry for help from Shirley’s mental mark, he decided he couldn’t afford to wait. Pushing the door open—Nina had a habit of sleeping without locking her door—he stepped into a dimly lit room. The faint glow from a street lamp outside provided just enough illumination to make out the shapes in the room.
At first glance, everything seemed normal. Shirley and Nina lay on the bed, sleeping peacefully, their bodies oriented in opposite directions—one’s head at the foot of the bed and the other’s legs against the first’s abdomen.
“Their sleeping positions are certainly artistic,” Duncan noted wryly.
However, his focus wasn’t on their sleeping positions. He was alarmed by Shirley’s furrowed brow and, more disturbingly, the mysterious black line squirming around her arm. This sight escalated his concern, compelling him to investigate further.
Duncan felt uneasy as he studied Shirley’s condition. To get to the bottom of this mysterious “erosion,” he activated the magical mark he had placed on her, intending to use the unique capabilities of his ghost fire to probe the room. A small green flame materialized beside the bed, casting a muted glow over the surroundings. After flickering uncertainly for a few moments, the flame stabilized.
Yet, it revealed nothing. There was no sign of any “erosion” in the room.
His forehead creased in puzzlement and concern, Duncan leaned in closer to better examine Shirley’s visibly distressed facial expression. He felt restricted in how much he could use his ghost fire. Unsure of how the spectral flame might interact with living beings, he couldn’t just flood the room with it as he had done in the factory to perform a comprehensive scan. Even so, the tiny spark of his ghost fire should have reacted if something was amiss.
“The erosion isn’t in the physical world? Could it be in the spiritual realm? Or is it something altogether different?” Duncan muttered, his mind racing through potential scenarios and options.
Deciding he needed to take more direct action, Duncan quickly returned to his own bedroom next door. There, he briskly shook awake Ai, a dove dozing on his windowsill.
“Wake up. We need to go spirit-walking,” he told the bird, who responded with a series of disgruntled coos.
Entering a dark tunnel filled with endless starlight, Duncan first steadied his mind before allowing his consciousness to navigate toward his objective. Unlike the more generic marks he had placed on objects like the White Oak steamship or on Vanna, Shirley’s mark had been intentionally crafted by him. This made it far more stable and easier to connect with in the spiritual realm.
….
Shirley’s eyes snapped open to find herself in a bedroom that felt both familiar and foreign. Rubbing her temple to shake off lingering disorientation, she began to sit up and survey her surroundings. Memories of where she was flooded back, and her eyes widened in a mix of recognition and anger.
Springing out of bed, she unleashed a torrent of curses into the air. “Damn it, damn it, damn it all! Not this again, not this again!”
In this otherworldly space, she wore light pink pajamas, unlike the ones Nina had given her. Her voice also seemed to have reverted to a younger, less mature version, one that existed only in her memories.
“Stop torturing me! Stop torturing me!” Shirley screamed, her voice echoing in the darkness. She lashed out with her arms and legs, pounding on the weathered wooden walls, even gnawing at the doorknob in a futile escape attempt. Despite her efforts, she couldn’t open the door. She huddled in the doorway, whimpering as morning light trickled through the cracks, deepening her sense of hopelessness and despair.
Soft footsteps approached from the other side of the door, breaking the heavy silence. A gentle voice, tugging at the deepest recesses of her heart, called out, “Shirley, Shirley? Are you awake? Are you still mad?”
Hearing her mother’s voice, Shirley’s body shook violently. Tears welled up in her eyes as she pressed herself tightly against the door, hoping to glimpse the person speaking from the other side.
“Shirley, your dad and I are going to buy you a birthday cake. You’ll be happy when we come back, won’t you?” her mother continued.
Shirley’s emotions erupted. “Don’t go,” she whispered, her voice shaky. Her plea quickly escalated into a desperate, gut-wrenching scream, “DON’T GO… DON’T LEAVE! DON’T LEAVE ME ALONE! PLEASE, I BEG YOU, DON’T LEAVE ME!”
In this dream, she couldn’t hold back her anguish any longer. She sobbed uncontrollably, her cries reaching a feverish pitch: “DON’T GO OUTSIDE! DON’T GO OUT THERE!”
Despite her desperate cries, time followed the cruel script of her haunting memory. She heard the sounds of her parents leaving—the rustle of her mother picking up her purse, the mechanical noise of a key turning in the front door lock.
Shirley collapsed onto the floorboards, feeling as if every part of her was disintegrating. The click of the door signaled the start of an agonizing countdown.
By the time her heart had beaten one thousand and two hundred times, she heard distant exclamations of fire.
At one thousand and six hundred heartbeats, the acrid smell of smoke began to seep through the cracks in the door.
When her heart had beaten one thousand and eight hundred times, the ambient glow through the door cracks turned an alarming red, as if the city itself had plunged into molten lava.
Finally, at two thousand heartbeats, a thunderous, muffled bang crashed through the front door. It was a sound reminiscent of a monstrous creature invading her home.
The door to Shirley’s room then gave way, splintering and shattering as if it were paper rather than wood.
What emerged was horrifying—a creature of pitch-black darkness, a hound cloaked in a miasma of malevolence. This was not Dog but a malevolent entity. At that moment, the dark hound seemed to have identified its target: the six-year-old girl standing petrified before it.
Shirley looked into the eyes of the dark hound, knowing this wasn’t her friendly partner but a sinister reenactment of her painful past. As the hound prowled into the room, a sickening sound followed—the sound of tearing flesh and crunching bone.
Though one of her limbs was horrifically consumed by the dark hound, Shirley remained motionless and eerily silent, not even screaming in response to the agonizing pain. Her entire being dissolved into a numb, almost ethereal emptiness. She pondered the timeline of her past ordeal—how long had it taken for this dark hound to transform into her loyal Dog? A day? A week? Her memories were murky, submerged in a thick fog.
As these thoughts swirled in her mind, her consciousness began to wane. The contours of her dark dream started to fade, blurring at the edges of her vision. Then, she detected something—an anomalous figure beside the bed. This shadow was a deeper black, something that shouldn’t exist in this familiar yet tormenting nightmare.
This shadowy figure seemed to have been there all along, standing like a sentinel rather than appearing out of thin air. This was a new development, contradicting the repetitive and torturous nightmares she had suffered countless times before.
Finally breaking the ominous silence, the shadowy figure spoke, its voice laced with an otherworldly gravitas: “I did not intend to pry.”
As these words reverberated in the nightmarish void, a flicker of green flame burst to life, briefly illuminating the immediate surroundings and revealing the face concealed behind that mysterious shadow.
God that is cool, and, while we recieved some indication of Shirley’s past, it sure does hit different huh
It certainly was quite the kick in the teeth, huh.
That is actually a horrifying ptsd nightmare to be plagued by, supernatural or not